My last communication was from Rome. It was piquant, on the day of departure thence from Naples, to dine at Terracina with a Prussian family, who had been stopped and robbed by brigands, at eight o'clock the previous morning, at a spot between Velletri and Cisterna. There was however no _Fra Diavolo_ in the case. The respectable _père de famille_, who with his sons and daughters had been laid under contribution, informed us that the fellows were evidently peasants unused to the trade; that they presented guns, in exacting their demand for money; but that they were nervous in their brief operation, and that they did not ransack the trunks, nor even carry off the watches and rings of the party. The chief sufferer was the vetturino, whom fright and the loss of thirty-six dollars had thrown into a fever, causing the detention which brought us into contact with the narrators. We passed on our way, without adventure; the safest period, there as elsewhere, being that which immediately follows one. I incline to think that extreme destitution induced this recourse to a practice almost obsolete, as it probably gave rise to the personal robberies, unattended with violence, which have been recently rife in Rome itself. And in connection with this point, I may swell the laments of late travellers as to the chronic prevalence, throughout Southern Italy, of those other unceasing robberies of extortion and mendicancy, which are so much more difficult of toleration. I declare that of all the mythical personages of classic lore brought back to one's memory by local association, whether in the Elysian Fields or on the borders of Lake Avernus, the Harpies are those who alone survive, and who obtrude themselves always and everywhere, in season and out of season. The foul brood have assumed human semblance, and haunt you in all varieties. The unbidden cicerone, or the sturdy beggar--it is hard to say which is the worse. How I anathematized them both at Sorrento, where there are certain souvenirs of Tasso, not so direct and tangible as those preserved in the Convent of San Onofrio at Rome, but which are worth the tracing. You will remember that the hapless poet found a resting place here in the house of his sister, after he escaped from his seven years' imprisonment at Ferrara. To be adjured, for charity, in the name of the Virgin and every Saint in the calendar--to have a jackass and a guide, or a jackass of a guide, thrust upon you, _nolens volens_ for an excursion that you have no mind to take, or to be importuned to "put out, put out, put out to sea," when you know that March winds and waves make the azure grotto of Capri totally inaccessible--these diversions, I say, do not assist one in gathering up one's reminiscences of Tasso, however much they may chasten and so improve the temper.